Claiming Noah (10 page)

James took her hand and held it on top of the bed covers. ‘Please will you go see someone? Even if it's just to talk. I think it will help, and maybe there's something they can recommend to make things easier for you.'

‘Drugs, you mean?'

‘So? If they're going to make you feel better, is that really such a bad thing? I just want my beautiful wife back; I hate seeing you so upset.'

Catriona glanced at her reflection in the mirrored wardrobe doors facing their bed. Her hair was oily from lack of washing and her skin looked sullen. She started to cry, the sobs tearing at her chest. She couldn't imagine ever getting past this, but James was right, she had to try. ‘Okay,' she said as James enveloped her in his arms and let her cry on to his shoulder. ‘I'll go talk to someone.'

•  •  •

Catriona's doctor surprised her by how much she knew about postpartum disorders.

‘There are three main types,' she said, holding up her fingers as if Catriona needed help to count. Sebastian was asleep in his pram. Catriona had positioned it so he was facing the wall of the doctor's office rather than her. ‘About eighty per cent of women experience a mild form of depression after they have a baby. It's generally referred to as the baby blues.'

‘I've heard of that.'

‘Yes, it's very common. And completely understandable. Your poor body has been flooded with hormones for nine months only to go through the massive trauma of childbirth, so of course it makes you feel off balance.'

Catriona stared at the back of Sebastian's pram, hoping their voices wouldn't wake him. She didn't want to have to console him in front of the doctor who would surely notice everything she was doing wrong.

She lowered her voice. ‘So, does it just go away on its own, then?'

‘The baby blues usually pass in a week or so,' the doctor said, turning in her chair to look at Catriona face on. ‘But from what you've told me, I don't think that's what we're dealing with here.'

Catriona squirmed in her seat, uncomfortable with the way she was being scrutinised. She wished she hadn't mentioned anything to James. It was no-one's business but her own. The last thing she needed was to have the doctor judge her. But Catriona had already admitted she was having trouble sleeping and bonding with Sebastian, so she had to say something.

‘My husband thinks I have postnatal depression,' she said.

The doctor nodded, tapping a pen against the wooden desk. ‘I'm wondering that too. It's more common than you probably think; it affects around one in seven new mums. Have you had a visit from a child-health nurse yet?'

‘A few weeks ago.'

‘And did she conduct a test called the
Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale
with you?'

‘I don't know what it was called. She asked me questions about how happy I was, whether I was sleeping, things like that.'

‘Did you answer it honestly?'

Catriona hesitated, wondering whether she should lie. The doctor was watching her, waiting for her response.

‘No,' she said in a small voice.

The doctor didn't seemed surprised by Catriona's admission. She turned to her computer and tapped at the keyboard.

‘Do you mind if I go through it again with you?' she asked.

Catriona answered the test with the responses she thought the doctor would expect. She admitted to being anxious and worried for no good reason, and to not coping as well as she used to, but she lied about the extent of it. When asked if she ever thought about harming herself or Sebastian, she said
no
and tried hard to make it convincing.

The doctor wrote something illegible on her prescription pad, then tore off the sheet and handed it to Catriona. ‘Get this filled. It's a prescription for antidepressants.'

She must have made a face because the doctor said, ‘Don't get caught up in the stigma of antidepressants, they're just a way to balance your levels until you don't need them any more. You'd be surprised how many people take them.'

Catriona studied the prescription for a moment and then folded it into thirds and put it in a side pocket of her handbag.

‘Have you joined a mothers' group?' the doctor asked.

Catriona grimaced, thinking about stories her friends had told her of their mothers' groups, where the conversation rarely strayed from birth stories and bodily functions. They had described to her the barely concealed hostility some women displayed when comparing which stage of development their babies had reached. Competitive mothers weren't something she wanted to deal with right now.

‘I'd rather swallow razor blades,' she said.

The doctor laughed as if it wasn't the first time someone had said that to her. ‘They're not that bad. I highly recommend you join one. You need some support. It might help you to be around other mothers.'

‘I'll think about it.'

‘You should. You'll find that the other mothers are going through exactly the same things you are. It'll help you to be able to talk to people other than your husband.'

Catriona started to get up from the chair, relieved that the appointment was over, but then she remembered something the doctor had said and sat back down. ‘What's the third type? You said there was the baby blues and postnatal depression. What's the third one?'

‘A condition called postpartum psychosis, or puerperal psychosis. It's rare, it only affects about one or two in every thousand mothers.'

‘What is it?'

‘It's a severe form of depression, usually involving hallucinations and a desire by the mother to harm either themselves or the baby. The treatment methods are more extreme.'

Catriona felt her hands shake. She wedged them under her thighs so the doctor wouldn't notice. ‘Like what?'

‘Hospitalisation, usually. And antipsychotic medication.' The doctor studied Catriona's face for a few seconds. ‘Are you sure you haven't had thoughts about harming yourself or your baby?'

Yes, she had. But how could she admit that to the doctor? How could she tell her that every time she walked past the stairs carrying Sebastian she imagined throwing him to the bottom? Or, if not Sebastian, herself. What would the doctor think of her if she admitted to something that horrible?

‘No.'

‘Good, that's a good sign. Try the antidepressants and join a mothers' group. I'm sure you'll notice an improvement soon.'

Catriona wanted to rush from the room and leave Sebastian behind, but instead she smiled at the doctor, thanked her, and manoeuvred the pram through the door and down the hallway. As she drove home she planned the conversation she would have with James so he believed her when she said she had things under control.

Wednesday, 18 April 2012

T
he hospital where Catriona had given birth to Sebastian gave her the contact details of a local mothers' group, and when she called, a woman named Rochelle told her they were all meeting at a nearby park later that month. She sounded pleasant on the phone, so Catriona decided to go along, even if it was just to prove to James and her doctor that mothers' groups were nothing more than an uncomfortable gathering of women who had little in common beyond the fact they had recently had a baby.

At least it gave Catriona a reason to leave the house. She hadn't gone outside in days. She was convinced the antidepressants the doctor had prescribed were causing hallucinations. The person she thought she had seen walking towards the nursery the day James found her wasn't a one-off. It was now a daily occurrence, sometimes even two or three times a day. At first she went hurrying after the person, determined to find someone, but she never did. She knew James didn't see them. They usually appeared when he was at work, but once a figure had lingered on the stairs while James was tying up his sneakers by the front door, preparing to go for a run.

‘Look over there!' Catriona called out, holding Sebastian in one arm and gesturing towards the stairs with the other. The person on the stairs waited patiently, an elbow resting on the banister, their face a blur of features so that Catriona couldn't tell whether they were male or female.

James's gaze followed the direction of Catriona's pointed finger. ‘What? What am I looking at?'

Catriona watched him take in the stairs, the landing, the hallway that led to the bottom step. His expression didn't change.

‘Nothing,' she said, turning her back. ‘I thought I saw a mouse.'

After a while, it stopped feeling strange to share a house with people James couldn't see. She grew used to their presence but became increasingly agitated about not understanding why they were there. Sometimes they spoke to her, but despite how much she strained to hear them, their voices were always too quiet for her to understand what they were saying. Then a few days before the mothers' group meeting, the voices started to grow louder, and clearer. They whispered to her that she was a bad mother, that James was scheming to take Sebastian away from her. She turned the television volume up high and stuffed plugs into her ears to silence their voices, but she couldn't block them out. They were trapped inside her mind.

On the Thursday the mothers' group was due to meet Catriona spent more than an hour doing her hair and make-up, something she hadn't done since Sebastian was born. She didn't want the other mothers to think she wasn't capable of looking after both herself and her baby.

The park was empty except for a group of women and prams taking up a long wooden table. Catriona's heart started to race but she forced herself to smile and walk towards the group.

‘You must be Catriona.' This came from an attractive woman wearing a pink jumper that matched the one worn by the baby lying in a pram next to her.

‘Yes. Hi.'

‘I'm Rochelle, we spoke on the phone.' Rochelle craned her neck so she could see into Catriona's pram. ‘And who is this little one?'

‘His name's Sebastian.'

‘He's a cutie. Look at all that hair!'

Catriona sat at the end of the table and positioned Sebastian's pram next to her, grateful that he was asleep so she wouldn't have to feed him a bottle in front of everyone. She listened without contributing to the conversation as the women spoke about their pregnancies, babies and husbands. Rochelle told the women about the trouble she had experienced getting her daughter to breast-feed, and how much it had upset her. Catriona started to think that maybe her doctor was right; maybe being around other mothers was what she needed. But then the conversation turned to the women's birth stories.

‘Twenty-three hours and then a natural birth,' said Rebecca, a heavy-set woman with dark hair pulled back in a severe part. ‘No drugs.'

All the women except Catriona gasped or offered her their congratulations, as if she had just swum the English Channel.

‘Planned C-section,' said another woman, Nadia. ‘Not by choice, of course. I'm not too posh to push or anything like that. The doctor said Ronan's huge head wasn't going to fit through my pelvis without tearing me open.' Catriona stared at Nadia, stunned that she could talk about it so casually. She glanced around the table, but the other women didn't seem put off.

Rochelle nodded at Nadia and murmured her approval. ‘You made the right choice. I had to have an episiotomy with Ruby. The scar's taking ages to heal. It still hurts when I sit down.'

‘What about you, Catriona?' the fourth woman, a redhead named Naomi, asked as she attached her baby to her nipple without even looking at what she was doing. To Catriona's amazement, the baby started sucking immediately.

‘What about what?' Catriona asked, not able to take her gaze away from Naomi's breast.

‘Tell us about how you had Sebastian.'

‘Why?'

The four women exchanged a glance before Nadia spoke. ‘Well . . . we're just curious, that's all.'

‘I had a caesarean,' Catriona said.

‘A planned one?' asked Rebecca.

‘No.'

‘So, it was an emergency caesar?' Rochelle asked.

‘I guess so.'

Nadia stroked the downy hair of the baby cradled in the crook of her arm. Ronan, supposedly. The one with the head too big for her pelvis. ‘Did you go into labour?'

‘Yes.'

‘That must have been terrible, you poor thing,' Nadia said. ‘Going through labour and then ending up with a C-section after all. Were you in labour long?'

‘I don't know. Long enough. Is there anywhere to get a coffee around here?'

Catriona left Sebastian in his pram by the table and walked over to a small kiosk at the corner of the park. The milk in her coffee tasted burned, but Catriona drank it anyway. She wished there was a way she could grab Sebastian and take him home without having to speak to the women again, but she knew that was impossible.

Naomi smiled at her as she sat back down. ‘How's the coffee?'

‘It's decaf,' Catriona said immediately. It wasn't.

‘Of course, I wasn't . . . I didn't mean anything.'

Catriona felt like they were all staring at her, judging her. None of them was drinking coffee. As soon as she left the table they would probably call child services, who would come to take Sebastian away from her. Maybe they had already called. She had seen Nadia on the phone while she was ordering her coffee. She glanced around the park, looking for the people who had come to take Sebastian away, but she couldn't see anyone.

‘So, you're breast-feeding, then?' Rebecca asked.

‘Yes,' Catriona said, turning back to look at her.

‘How are you finding it? It's getting a bit easier for me now, but it was so painful in the beginning. My nipples cracked and bled horribly.'

That was it. There was no way she was going to engage in nipple talk with this bunch of women.